[bunderbunder]

Life was different in the '80s. Oberon targeted the NS32000, which didn't have a floating point unit. Let alone most the other modern niceties that could lead to a large difference between CPU features used by the compiler itself, and CPU features used by other programs written using the compiler.

That said, even if the exact heuristic Wirth used is no longer tenable, there's still a lot of wisdom in the pragmatic way of thinking that inspired it.

[whartung]

Speaking of that, if you were ever curious how computers do floating point math, I think the first Oberon book explains it in a couple of pages. It’s very succinct and, for me, one of the clearest explanations I’ve found.